


We're Pretty And Sick, We're Young And We're Bored

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Quarantine, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24476077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Infected with a rare alien illness, the Doctor finds herself trapped aboard the TARDIS with the Master for the sake of the universe. She tries to let that thought sustain her, but it's difficult with such an unwanted and unwelcome house guest...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 116





	We're Pretty And Sick, We're Young And We're Bored

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, you have to write a trope. And sometimes that trope happens to be 'AND THEY WERE IN LOCKDOWN TOGETHER.' The rest just sort of... happened.

“Bad news.”

The Doctor feels rather than sees the Master’s gaze on her; feels the suspicion oozing off him as she looks down at the sonic with a grimace. Surely it can’t be right? Surely there must be some kind of mistake… they’d been careful; they’d taken every precaution; they’d done everything right.

“What?” he asks, his tone dripping with disgust, but beneath it there’s a spark of panic that neither of them want to acknowledge. He disguises it with a disdainful eye roll, but she can sense his agitation as she shakes the sonic, as though that might elicit a different outcome. “Did one of your pets die? I hope it was the-”

“They’re not pets,” she points out absentmindedly, holding the device near her ear and flicking through settings at speed. “And you’ll treat them with respect, or – stop trying to distract me. Bad news.”

“You said that already. Spit it out, love.”

“We’re infected.”

“We’re _what_?”

“We’re infected,” the Doctor repeats, scanning them both again to make sure. The sonic chirps its assessment aloud, and she groans as it confirms its earlier diagnosis. “Worse… we’re contagious.”

“How can we be infected?” the Master scowls, folding his arms and leaning again the console with a sulky expression that clearly indicates his disbelief. “We were careful on Cormoria-Nine. We wore masks. And besides… you said we weren’t susceptible to the plague. Superior Time Lord biology, remember?”

“Well,” the Doctor shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, remembering her confident assertion of hours previously. It had been intended merely as a back-up assurance; a final line of defence if their protective gear failed. Which it had, apparently; more than that, it had failed in a spectacular fashion. “We might have been immune to it several strains ago, but apparently now it’s mutated, and apparently now it likes Time Lords.”

“Oh, for Rassilon’s…” the Master mutters, putting his hands over his face and letting out a strangled scream into his palms. “I don’t believe you. You’re reading the damn sonic wrong. We can’t have got the Stargazer Plague; we’d have noticed it entering our systems.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You were always terrible at biology,” the Master extracts his own screwdriver from a pocket and scans them both, before his scowl intensifies and his jaw sets. He puts the tool away wordlessly, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes at her in a manner that communicates clearly to her that he’s just discovered that she’s not mistaken. “Where did you get the masks from?”

“Jim the Fish.”

“Oh, well that explains bloody everything,” the Master huffs, contempt dripping from every word. “Remind me to make him into Jim the Sushi next time I see him, alright? Dodgy masks… for Rassilon’s… why is it always you? And why is it always me?”

“Well,” the Doctor aims for bitter levity, her worry giving way to irritation as she realises what their infected status means. “We are the last two Time Lords left in the universe, remember?”

“Are you going to _keep_ mentioning that?”

“I don’t know, are you going to apologise?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

“You are categorically no fun.”

“Oh yeah, genocide, really funny. What a great laugh. Bants!”

“Did you just say…” the Master blinks at her, his expression horrified. “Never say that again. You’re spending too much time on Earth. Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be getting back to your pets?”

“What, so I can infect them?” the Doctor raises an eyebrow, flicking several switches on the console to activate the ship’s filtration system, as well as deadlocking the doors. “Don’t be daft.”

“They’ll be fine. They won’t even know what’s hit them. A couple of days of agonising suffering and then they’ll be dead. We could start a pandemic – now _there’s_ an idea. I’m sure I could flog an empty Earth off to some unsuspecting-”

“You’re incorrigible, aren’t you?” the Doctor shoots him a bemused expression, then folds her arms and attempts to look stern. “We are not going back to Earth. We _can’t_. We’ve got to stay here until the risk passes.”

“What, two weeks stuck here with you?” the Master raises his eyebrows, giving a disdainful snort that falls somewhat short of appearing convincing. “No thank you.”

“Let me rephrase that: I’m not letting you leave this ship.”

“Oh, Thete,” he pouts, and the use of her childhood nickname rankles, but she tries not to let it show; best not to let him know the blow has landed. “We both know you have an abysmal track record when it comes to stopping me from doing what I want.”

“That’s funny, because I do distinctly recall stopping you on every single occasion you’ve tried to mess with Earth.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” the Master shoots back brightly, but his expression flickers, just for a second. “I’ll give it a shot.”

“I mean it,” the Doctor reiterates, swallowing thickly and staring him down with as much confidence as she can muster. “I’m not letting you leave here. I’m not letting you infect anyone.”

“And how are you going to stop me?” he asks, making a sudden dash for the door, and the Doctor sighs and flicks a switch. A bolt of electricity flickers down from the ceiling and lances through the Master, who lets out an involuntary yelp and then collapses to the floor of the console room in a lightly-smoking heap, his limbs twitching.

“Ow,” he manages in a small voice, after several seconds of silent, involuntary jerking. “Where did you get _that_ from?”

“Had it installed after The Year That Never Was. Wanted to make sure that you didn’t get any more ideas about taking my ship for joyrides… or turning it into a paradox machine again. It’s keyed to your DNA, so regenerating won’t help. Not that you would even think about it… you’re much too vain for that, aren’t you?”

“If _you_ were this attractive, you wouldn’t want to regenerate,” the Master seethes, struggling into a sitting position with some difficulty and then propping himself against a column as he affixes her with a snide look and struggles to catch his breath. “I mean… not that you’re _not_ , but we do both know how badly your regenerations have gone, don’t we? Your poor TARDIS… all that fire damage… it’s a wonder she ever lets you pilot her anywhere, the damage you do. I’d be much better suited at piloting-”

The Doctor, against her better judgement, flicks the switch again and the Master lets out a yelp of complaint which turns into a strangled giggle as he slumps back against the column with a grin. “Play nicely,” he says in a singsong tone. “Or don’t. I didn’t know you were such a sadist, Doctor. Maybe I _could_ last two weeks with you if you’re going to be this nasty to me all the time… I could get used to that."

“I…” the Doctor looks down at him, unsure how to respond. She’s not used to flirting, and certainly not used to him being the one to try to flirt with her. She’d just about managed it with Missy, but then Missy had been fractionally less genocidal, and fractionally more composed. The raw, feral energy that burns within the Master now had been absent from Missy; she had been cold, calculated and passionate, but never wild; never impulsive; never untamed, not like this. The Doctor bites her lip and drops her gaze, twisting her hands together in lieu of a response.

“Oh, don’t look so frightened, dear. We both know I’m a glutton for punishment, and we both know how much you like hurting me, metaphorically and literally,” the Master continues. “My poor little hearts have been broken by you so many times that I’m surprised there’s any of them left. Or maybe there isn’t… maybe that’s why I’m so… so… oh, what’s the word? _Uninhibited_. It’s so much easier to be cruel when the person you care about most is the person who keeps hurting you, over and over and over again.”

“‘The person you care about most’?” the Doctor repeats, raising her eyebrows at the frank admission. The words are surprising; she wants to brush them off as mythomania or manipulation, but there’s something in the way the Master is looking at her that renders her unsure. “I always thought that was you.”

“Obviously it’s me,” the Master gives a casual little laugh, or attempts to, but the sound is wrong; it falters and rings untrue. The Doctor knows then; knows that the words were meant genuinely. It shouldn’t be surprising, but to hear them spoken aloud is… strange. Both yearned-for and dreaded, they’re words she hasn’t heard since they’d been students at the Academy, when they’d sworn a vow of undying friendship. “It was a turn of phrase.”

“Right.”

“You don’t matter to me at all,” the Master insists, but there’s panic in his gaze now. He knows that she knows that he’d been telling the truth, and that scares him. “Not one iota.”

“You spend a lot of time trying to kill me considering I don’t matter to you. A lot of time trying to get my attention. A lot of time trying to kill my friends.”

“I’ve never liked to share. Especially not when it came to you.”

“No, I remember,” the Doctor looks him in the eyes then, and a spark of recollection passes between them, white hot and charged. Memories of their youth; memories of journeys taken in borrowed TARDISes; memories of nights spent together under the stars. Memories of other nights, and stolen kisses, and exploratory touches. The thought of _those_ nights makes her cheeks burn, and she turns away before he can see. “You never liked to look after your toys, either. I remember you smashing them to pieces with rocks; should I be grateful you’ve never tried that with me?”

“Far too unsubtle,” the Master shudders delicately. “You deserve something infinitely more… refined.”

“Like tampering with my mask to ensure I got infected with Stargazer Plague?”

That pulls him up short, and he bites down on his lip, but not quickly enough. A smirk plays over his features, lightning-fast, and she knows that her guess is correct.

She crouches in front of him and continues, in a gloating tone: “You didn’t think of this, though, did you? Didn’t think that when we got back here, you’d become infected the second I took it off.”

“Of course I did,” he rolls his eyes, then looks over at their discarded masks, wrapped in several layers of sealed plastic, and it’s then that she understands. This was deliberate. Contaminating her and then himself… it’s part of the plan. “But… there were… sacrifices to be made.”

“You could’ve come up with at least twenty ways to prevent cross-contamination; you could’ve left me on Cormoria-Nine and let me come back here alone. You didn’t. Why?”

“More fun to stick around and watch you suffer,” he quips. They’re close enough to touch each other, and his hands twitch as though he wants to, but he remains where he is. “More fun to watch you try to stay away from Earth and your pets for fear of killing them. Although, realistically, that’s a fear you should have every day… they’re so breakable, aren’t they, humans? Easy enough to squish out of existence, like bugs.”

“Have I ever told you that you’re extremely irritating?” she says with annoyance, getting to her feet and turning back to the console.

“Not often enough, frankly,” she can tell he’s smirking from his tone alone. “Say it again, love.”

“You’re stuck here with me, so I’d suggest not being patronising.”

“That, in itself, is patronising. You’re aware of the irony, right?”

“Shut up.”

“Shan’t,” she turns back to him as he taunts her defiantly and he beams. “You’ve got two entire weeks stuck with me, and I fully intend to make the most of that.”

* * *

By the end of day one, the Master seems entirely inured to their new life together. He’s weirdly deferential and oddly helpful, which probably means he’s planning something terrible, but the Doctor doesn’t have the energy to care. She’s tried – and failed – to tidy the console room, thought about reorganising the library by the colour of the book covers, and then given up and attempted to make banana bread, all of which has only wasted approximately four hours, give or take the odd minute.

She doesn’t feel ill, but she knows how Stargazer Plague works; knows the way it inveigles itself into people’s immune systems and lurks there, ready to infect their unsuspecting family and friends or strike them down at any moment. She’s not sure whether being ill or not being ill would be worse; at least if she was afflicted then she might be able to sleep some of the two weeks away, and she wouldn’t have to deal with the Master, who would undoubtedly want to avoid her if she were to be incapacitated. Still, she supposes, then there would be the issue of supervising him, and so she resigns herself to her unwilling role as his custodian until the danger has passed. It’s an unfortunate necessity and puts her far more in mind of Missy and the Vault than she would like, but it can’t be helped; he mustn’t be allowed out of the TARDIS, and he certainly mustn’t be allowed to Earth, to which he would be drawn like a moth to a flame.

Sabotaging her mask had been a stroke of genius, she supposes, but she still doesn’t understand his desire to watch her suffer. He purports to care, and yet to watch her suffer requires some degree of detachment; some kind of exception to the sadism and cruelty he so willingly exhibits towards others. Harming _them_ is easy; harming someone you claim to care about is much harder. The Doctor knows. She’s done it often enough.

He might claim that his actions had been deliberate but she is not so easily fooled, and she wonders the extent to which he’s frightened for himself, wondering whether he’ll become sick and whether she’ll tend to him if he does. She supposes she ought to; reasons that it wouldn’t be kind to abandon him in some far-flung room on the ship, but a part of her hopes that they’ll both retain their health, because the thought of being in proximity to him for so long, tending to him as she would to a child, is painful. The thought of his breathless jibes and how his sweat-damp skin would feel is distracting and confusing, and she tries not to linger on the image it summons; tries not to think about other Masters and other Doctors and what had come to pass between them. If he needed her, she would do her duty to him, in honour of their friendship-slash-enmity. That’s all.

She sighs, reaching for her phone and dropping him a text in lieu of attempting to locate him in the TARDIS.

_Hungry?_

She receives back a stream of gibberish emojis, which she takes to mean yes, and gets to her feet in search of the kitchen. She remembers his past self and how he’d craved food once he’d been imperfectly revived from the dead; remembers sitting with him in the shadow of a junkyard as he’d devoured burgers and hot dogs and a litany of fast food she can no longer remember, the flickering light from a bonfire illuminating them both. She remembers cream teas in expensive hotels with Missy and dinner dates at fancy restaurants that had invariably ended with both of them trying to escape off-world, sometimes covered in food. She thinks of those meals, formal and informal, with a smile, wonders about this Master’s culinary habits, and decides to try making a cake. If nothing else, it’ll pass the time.

* * *

This Master, it would seem, enjoys cooking far more than she does, which is not a hardship. Once the Doctor realises this, she’s only too happy to leave him – mostly – to it, keeping a wary eye on him to ensure he doesn’t appropriate any knives about his person or slip anything unpleasant into the food. But he seems content however, to simply show off his skills, and so she lets him, enjoying the cakes and pastries and meals he whips up semi-regularly, and strangely, he seems to enjoy watching her eat them. There’s something hypnotic about watching him as he cooks; the rhythmic chopping and slicing, the soothing patterns his hands form as he stirs saucepans and bowls of creamy mixtures, the way the tendons in his arms flex as he preps and dices and mixes. Watching him work, she’s often unavoidably reminded of how it feels to be held in those arms – or at least, another version of them – and what his hands – or his past hands – can do. If her cheeks burn red then… well, it’s warm in the kitchen. That’s all.

“What’s the deal with the food?” she asks warily one evening, twirling pasta onto her fork and watching him as he grates parmesan onto his own plate. “Why are you being so… helpful?”

“There’s always an ulterior motive with you, isn’t there?” he looks up at her with an expression akin to weariness, setting down the grater with a sharp _clang_. “It can never just… be, can it? Nothing I do can ever just be innocent; I always have to be plotting or scheming or trying to kill you.”

“ _Are_ you trying to kill me?”

“No, I’m trying to make the perfect spaghetti carbonara.”

“I meant in general.”

“I suppose so?” he looks at her with surprising vulnerability, wrinkling his nose, as though the thought is distasteful. Impeding on their domestic bubble, it certainly seems it; it’s easier to pretend in here that nothing is wrong; easier to pretend that they haven’t spent several millennia engaged in covert and overt warfare with each other. The reminder of the Master’s intentions is jarring; steel in a velvet glove. “In general? But you’re already infected, so what good would that do?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“No,” he says maddeningly, leaning back and picking up his fork. “It’s much more fun watching you agonise over the ins and outs of it all.”

* * *

“Hey!” the Doctor waves at the camera on her phone, feeling foolish. Onscreen, Ryan, Yaz and Graham wave back; they’re crammed into Yaz’s lounge and beaming at her, but there’s a tinge of concern in their expressions.

“What’s going on?” Yaz asks, frowning as she speaks. “Why are you being so weird and cagey about where you are?”

“It’s… a long story,” the Doctor grimaces, gesturing to the space around her. “I’m in the TARDIS. I’m safe. Mostly.”

The Master ambles into the room behind her, and the team’s jaws drop in unison. She turns and looks at him and realises he’s wearing one of her t-shirts; her stomach lifts and then drops uncomfortably, and a strange feeling begins to radiate through her chest.

“She’s _not_ mostly safe,” the Master gives them a jaunty little wave, as though it’s perfectly usual for him to be aboard her ship and wearing her clothes. “I mean, for a start, she’s with me, and she’s infected with a possibly-deadly pathogen.”

“Which I’m staying here to contain,” the Doctor clarifies, deciding not to refer to the t-shirt. Maybe the fam haven’t noticed. She _hopes_ the fam haven’t noticed. “So, don’t worry about it spreading or anything, please.”

“More worried about you _having_ a ‘possibly-deadly pathogen,’ if I’m being honest, Doc,” Graham chips in. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” the Doctor says brightly, shooting the Master a black look. “I might throttle him to death, but I’m otherwise fine.”

“I didn’t know choking was one of your kinks,” the Master deadpans, and the Doctor goes immediately, spectacularly maroon. “You surprise me every day.”

There’s the muted sound of horrified spluttering from the phone, and the Doctor ends the video call before she has to face the prospect of looking back at the team and having to address that accusation.

“Why are you like this?”

“Because I want you to understand that we’re the same.”

“We’re _not_ the same,” she counters, and her tone is low and aggressive. “Not in any way.”

“Oh, but we are. The last two Time Lords, frustrated and unsatisfied and constantly at each other’s throats.”

“I’m not constantly at your throat.”

“No, you just get your ship to keep zapping me whenever I try to leave.”

“Whenever you try to leave _to start a pandemic_ , yes,”

“Spoilsport.”

“We are not…” she repeats, clenching her hands into fists and fighting to keep her temper. “We are _not_ the same. I am _not_ like you.”

“But you are,” he says softly, his eyes wide and gleeful. “We ascertained that in the graveyard all those years ago, didn’t we? You might paint yourself as sanctimonious and holier-than-thou, but at the end of it all, you’re willing to do exactly what I do, but in the name of righteousness. It doesn’t matter if you’re committing genocide to bring about perfect chaos or to stop a war, it’s still genocide. You aren’t any different to me because your intentions are noble; you aren’t absolved of your crimes because you’ve saved a planet a few thousand times. You couldn’t save ours, could you? You could save Earth but you couldn’t save Gallifrey… couldn’t stop me…”

She pushes him then, hard in the chest, and he staggers backwards a few steps, looking genuinely surprised by the show of force.

“How could I stop you?!” she demands to know. “How could I stop you when I didn’t even know… I didn’t even know you were alive?”

“You never bothered to check, did you?” he asks quietly, and somehow his reserved tone only makes her feel worse. “You never bothered to come back for me… never bothered to see what had happened to me...”

“I was trying to save the humans… I was regenerating!”

“No, Doctor, you were being selfish. _Again_. Putting them over me. _Again_. Why can’t you accept it? Why can’t you understand that I will always understand you better and care for you more than the pathetic little humans you insist on bringing along as pets?”

She hits him then. Her hand connects with his cheek, and as the ensuing, bitterly satisfying crack rings through the silence of the ship, she realises that she’s hyperventilating, her hand burning red-hot where it’s now hovering in the space between them, her mind caught between remorse and the urge to slap him again. The Master remains motionless, his eyes downcast, and when he looks up at her, his eyes are frightening; full of fervour and coldness; passion and resignation.

“Do you feel better now?” he asks simply. “Does it bring you joy to hurt me?”

“I…”

He catches hold of her hand, lacing their fingers together, and the contact is intoxicating. His palm is rough and cool beneath hers, and she feels her breathing hitch as he squeezes her hand; a warning and a reassurance in one.

“You were always so full of fire,” he continues, and she lifts her other hand to… well, she doesn’t know. Strike him again, or claw at him until he relinquishes his hold on her. Instead he catches hold of that hand too, easily holding both of hers in one of his own, and he reaches up with his free hand to cup her cheek, and his touch is scalding. She can feel her nerves sing under his touch, and she knows he can feel her pleasure as it radiates from her; loathes herself for her inability to control it. “You always burned so brightly, but never for me.”

“I… you…”

“It was always the humans, never me. Once you’d found them, you cast me aside like a broken toy. You never thought that it might break _me_ ,” there’s an openness and rawness in his tone that is uncomfortable in its vulnerability. “You never thought that perhaps we ought to fall back together, two broken halves of a whole.”

“We are _not_ … we _shouldn’t_ … you…” she wants to squirm in his grasp, but there’s something so overwhelming about the effortless way in which he’s holding her hands; something so heady in the way that he’s touching her cheek as though she’s made of glass, and she remains motionless.

“Give in to it.”

“We… no…”

“Say my name.”

Silence falls between them as she looks at him, their eyes locking and his thumb skimming over her cheekbone, half-caress and half-warning. She bites her lip and he moves his hand lower, the pad of his thumb tracing over her lower lip, and she feels her breathing hitch, her teeth slipping away from the skin.

“Say my name,” he repeats, and this time there’s the slightest hint of an edge to the demand.

“Master.”

He closes his eyes, a vision of perfect ecstasy.

“Again.”

“Master.”

He pulls her to him and kisses her, and somewhere in the back of her mind she remembers the infection; wants to communicate this to him; _needs_ to; but he seems to anticipate this and pulls away for the briefest of seconds.

“It’s too late,” he murmurs, then returns to the kiss.

They both know he doesn’t mean the Plague.

* * *

“We’re still just friends,” the Doctor asserts. They’re in bed together, both staring at the ceiling as the recycled air of the ship cools their sweat-damp skin.

“We are?”

The Doctor rolls onto her front, looking over at the prone figure of the Master beside her. He has one hand arranged artfully under his head, and the other lays halfway between them on the mattress, as though he’d started to reach for her before second-guessing the action.

“Yes,” she hums. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“I don’t think ‘just friends’ do this,” he asserts, rolling onto his side and allowing his fingertips to trail the length of her spine, starting at her coccyx and moving them higher millimetre by millimetre. “Do you?”

“That’s never stopped us before,” she murmurs, his touch sending sparks of electricity through her. “Not…”

“I don’t want to think about those times,” he half-growls, moving to straddle her and pinning her to the mattress in a way that would previously have seemed threatening, but instead now elicits a low moan from the Doctor. “I don’t want to think about _them_ with you.”

“Are you jealous of your own self?” she teases, trying and failing to raises her torso and finding herself pushed back down against her better judgement. “With me?”

“Maybe,” he murmurs in her ear. “Maybe not. I don’t like to share.”

“And yet you’ve never killed River or Cla-”

“Don’t remind me. They’re on my list.”

“Killing a ghost and an immortal?” the Doctor laughs breathlessly. “Good luck with that.”

“I’m willing to try,” he argues, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder. “And you’ve always so enjoyed my dangerous side in the past.”

“That’s…”

“What?” he pressed another kiss to the other shoulder, then trailed a line of kisses across her skin, tracing the column of her throat. “Tell me that you haven’t. Tell me honestly that you haven’t, and I’ll stop.”

“You’re confusing…” the Doctor takes a tremulous breath as he kisses along the length of her jaw. “Arousal with approval…”

“So it turns you on?”

“Oh,” the Doctor lets out a quiet whimper as he kisses the side of her mouth, maddeningly close to where she wants to feel his lips. She tries to move but he only pins her all the more completely to the bed, and she shivers softly. “Yes, you know it does… you…”

He smirks, his lips grazing her ear as he whispers: “So, I can’t stop then, can I? I can’t let you down… can’t leave you on edge…”

“You’re…”

He releases her abruptly, rolling her over as he does so, and victory burns in his gaze as she wraps her arms around his neck and draws him down into her embrace.

* * *

On their eighth day together, they’re laying in each other’s arms, sleep still settled over them like a blanket, when the Master freezes, his hand halfway from her hip to her shoulder.

“What?” she asks faintly, arching her spine to try and encourage him to keep trailing his fingertips over her skin.

“You’re…” he reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp, and the Doctor yelps, burrowing into the pillow in protest at the sudden brightness. The Master lets out a long, slow groan of horror, then shakes her gently. “Look at me.”

She whimpers and pulls away, trying to hide in the pillow more completely, but he seizes her shoulder and drags her roughly upright, looking her in the eyes and then letting her fall back onto the pillows with a second groan.

“What?” she asks, panic beginning to stir in her stomach. “What is it?”

She holds up her arm and turns it over, freezing as she notices the large, blotchy, blue rash that has blossomed on her skin overnight. Rolling over and scrabbling around in her bedside table for anything reflective, she comes up with a used chocolate wrapper and examines her eyes in it, finding her irises a deep shade of navy blue.

“No,” she whispers, horror creeping over her. “No, I can’t…”

“It’s alright,” the Master says, his tone surprisingly measured. “It’s alright. You’re going to be alright.”

“How?” she asks, reaching for him with shaking hands. “How is this going to be alright?”

“I’m here,” he reminds her, reaching for the duvet and wrapping it around her reassuringly as she starts to shiver. “Don’t worry.”

“That’s… sort of a reason to worry.”

“For Rassilon’s sake, you’re sick. I’m hardly going to try anything when you’re sick.”

She affixes him with a bemused look, and he gets to his feet, appearing genuinely hurt.

“Really? After everything over the past few days… after all of this… you still don’t trust me?”

“That’s not…” she begins, trying to get up and finding her strength is failing her. “No, that’s not… I was…”

“Fine,” he mutters, storming out of the room. “Fine, that’s…”

He passes out of range of her hearing, and when she tries to struggle to her feet she falls to her knees on the bedroom floor. The shock of it brings tears to her eyes – or so she tells herself – and she crawls back into bed and reaches for her phone, unlocking it with shaking hands and then dropping it onto the mattress when she realises that telling the fam that she’s sick will only elicit further worry from them. Flopping back on her pillows, she lets out a long, low groan, and closes her eyes tightly.

When she opens them again, the Master is stood quietly beside the bed with a tray bearing a bowl of something steaming.

“Wh…”

“I made you soup,” he says shortly, setting the tray down beside her. “If nothing else… I’m not letting you starve.”

* * *

The days pass in a haze. There’s soup and stews and warm cups of tea; there’s custard creams she can hardly taste and tiny, soft cakes that mercifully don’t take much chewing. Each night, the Master climbs into bed beside her and either holds her close or keeps his distance as her fever rages, and each morning he carries her into the bathroom and holds her up in the shower, removing the sheen of sweat from her skin with infinite care.

It’s on one such trip to the shower that she dares to ask the question. She’s been slipping in and out of sleep for so long that she no longer knows what day it is, and her waking hours have been so dogged by pain that the realisation, during this particular shower, that she feels stronger is emboldening.

“Why are you being nice?” she asks weakly, her head supported by the Master’s shoulder. She feels him tense in response to the inquiry, then relax again as the hot water cascades over them.

“Because, you ridiculous woman,” he begins, but under the levity in his tone, there’s an honesty that catches her attention. “It might have escaped your notice, but if you die, I don’t have anyone to play with anymore.”

“That doesn’t…”

“Maybe I care. So what?”

The words hang between them, heavy with meaning, and the Doctor wants to think about it; wants to challenge him on it; wants to do many, many things, but her treacherous legs threaten give way and she slumps sideways without warning.

The Master catches her before she can hit the side of the cubicle, taking her weight and supporting her with care.

“Easy, now,” he murmurs, ruffling her soaking wet hair. “Come on. Bed.”

She doesn’t have the energy to protest.

* * *

As she tosses and turns, the last of the Plague leaving her body, she is haunted by ghosts. Friends and family; lovers and enemies; villains and monsters; all of them appear to her in the darkness of her bedroom, all of them looking at her with accusatory stares, as though she ought to have saved them. She knows she ought to; bites back screams and protests and cries of remorse as they stare at her, hollow-eyed, as though demanding apologies.

Each time she awakes fully, she feels stronger; each time she awakes fully, the Master is there, patient and understanding. He doesn’t ask her about her night-time whimpers or mumbled words; he doesn’t need to. She has no doubt that he has enough ghosts of his own.

“Why?” she asks again, once the worst is behind her. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’ve told you,” the Master says with a shrug. “Maybe I care.”

* * *

That night, they make and unmake each other. She feels clumsy and dead-limbed still, her convalescence having rendered her body a stranger to her. Each time the Master touches her, it feels like the first time; stars burst and flare across her skin as he trails his hands over her, worshipping her, reminding her how beautiful it can feel when they do this. In the glow from the TARDIS walls, his lips find her cheeks, her jaw, her throat, her eyes, and finally her lips, and when he kisses her until she’s breathless, she allows herself a small smile of hope. Allows herself to dream; allows herself to wonder if this is it, she’s tamed him.

As his teeth find the soft skin of her neck and his hands find either side of her throat and squeeze – gentle enough to avoid her respiratory bypass; hard enough for her to feel it – she allows herself to moan; allows herself to sigh; allows herself to come undone.

As she falls asleep in his arms, she hardly dares breathe for the fragile optimism rising inside her, her oldest friend’s arm slung protectively over the small of her back.

* * *

When she awakes on the morning of day twenty-two – she’d had to check – she finds the ship empty. The Master has – it seems – fled back to his own TARDIS, no longer concerned with caring for her, and she wanders through the corridors of her ship on unsteady legs, feeling weak and vulnerable in a way that she despises.

As she reaches the kitchen, which is cleaner than she’s ever seen it, she finds a note on the countertop, held fast under a tin of soup and a packet of custard creams, from which a single biscuit is missing.

_I’m sorry._

_There were nano-explosives in the food._

_You’ve got five days to find me, and then it’s bye-bye!_

_Ready or not…_

She swears almightily in Gallifreyan, and stumbles towards the console room.


End file.
